Posted
by
Hemos
on Wednesday January 17, 2001 @07:21AM
from the good-idea-bad-idea dept.

ovidus naso writes " Minister Tasca decided not to go forward with her computer tax project. My impression is that this was just political play (her strongest enemies are fellow socialists, naturally!).
The Liberation is carrying the story with the retracation. " As always with non-fluent speakers, the fish is your friend. Remember: You get a twofold benefit with Babelfish: The translation to the story to get the main gist of the story, and the actual translation has so many laughable areas, you have an entry to a bad poetry competition.

Nous let us not plan to tax the computers " : such are the words " fire hose " whose Catherine Tasca yesterday sprinkled the hemicycle at the time of the meeting of the questions to the government. Once, twice, three times. Pompière of service, decided to embed an opposition which improvises pyromaniac : " It is a tactic to shout with fire before there is fire " , reproached the Minister for the Culture the address of a line goguenarde. " It is good, the grass snakes ? " , howls the RPR Patrick Devedjian.

It is necessary some more to dismount Catherine Tasca. Does Olivier de Chazeaux (RPR) reproach to the Prime Minister the " tax culture " of the government and his mania supposed to regulate the problems thanks to surtaxes ? It is it, and not Lionel Jospin, who again rises : " You have a will of confusion which confines with the misinformation. We do not create a tax. He is a pity which you choose to poke of the nonfounded fears. " A boob, that is only assumed.

A boob... summarized well here the general feeling on the left. Words of Socialists, Catherine Tasca would have better done to keep silent itself rather than to publicly consider a possible tax on the computers and other instruments likely to copy works ( Release of yesterday). As of Monday, Lionel Jospin took down his telephone to explain to his Minister for the Culture that the words like " tax " or " taxation " are explosive matters, to handle with infinitely prudence - and after agreement of Matignon.

On its side, the ministry for the Economy made in evening a first avenger statement, before softening the tone.

Yesterday, at the time of the breakfast which brings together with the table of the Prime Minister the socialist leaders (François Holland, number 1 of the PS, Jean-Marc Ayrault, president of the group PS to the national Assembly, and Claude Estier, his counterpart with the Senate), it was again the festival with Tasca. Jean-Marc Ayrault and especially François Holland howled their dissatisfaction, underlining the inconsistency that there was to display an objective of fall of the taxes and in same time to announce the birth of a new tax, when well even the latter would not be of tax nature...

For proof, the opposition was given some already to heart joy. Ones, like deputy DL François Goulard, denouncing " a new universal taking away " ; others, the such RPR Christian Estrosi, underlining " the additional obstacle with the democratization of Internet " .

For the leaders of the PS, it was urgently necessary to raise ambiguity. Even if it means to condemn the Tasca tax officially. The Prime Minister did not contradict them. Moreover, yesterday, with the ministry for the Culture, the principal interested party recognized, into private, to have shown " awkwardness " .

With the PS, the mea culpa could not be enough to clear Matignon and to more largely clarify the governmental priorities. " the machine packed without there being arbitration of the Prime Minister " , insisted Jean-Marc Ayrault. " We fell from naked ", slipped one in Bercy. In short, the ideas of Tasca belong to Tasca, only to it. Received message. Death in the heart, the minister, yesterday in front of the deputies, buried itself the idea that it was on the point of defending near the actors of the data-processing die. The tax on the computers is still-born child. Governmental coherence obliges.

Remember, it was an interview. Figaro might have dissenting opinions, but I don't see them making up interviews of ministers in place. In the case they did, she could sue them... hmm... I did'nt recall hearing her complaining about Figaro...

The culture Ministry's retractation came less than 48 hours after the original interview. It now appears that it has never been a governement project, just a vague idea from Mme Tasca. It comes along with a few other tax-related blunders from the government, including a proposal for selective tax breaks for the low income salaries, which was censored by our constitution watchdog court.

All that to say that maybe slashdot should delay a little bit this kind of scoops.

I discovered that the Ministere de la Culture's web site uses Netscape Enterprise, even though under the previous minister it had been stated that all the ministry's IT infrastructure would go linux. So why doesn't it use Apache ?

I would think paying a tax on blank media that is then distributed to artists would, in many people's minds, justify even more piracy. After all, the artist is still getting compensated, regardless of whether I buy that CD or just copy it to a new CD-R...

That since people are willing go to the states, and pay the full cost of treatment (not just medical insurance), the total cost in the states is lower than in Canada. That is, including the cost of not getting treatment in time in Canada.

The law of diminishing returns may be in effect, but that does not mean that the extra expense is not worth spending.Cheers,

It would be more similar to buying 2 p400s (one for yourself, and one for a freeloader), as opposed to an 800 for your own use. More total productivity may be gained by the extra system, but not for the person buying the equipment.Cheers,

Well if the French decide that way, maybe that gives us in Germany some hope. But currently it is assumed that Germans have to expect a price increase of about 180 DEM ($90) for a basic fully-equipped PC. Fees are currently expected to be put on PCs, Scanners, Printers, CD Writers and DVD drives. These fees will be shared between the the German Author's Rights Society (GEMA [www.gema.de]), the "VG Wort" [vgwort.de] (the Literature counterpart of the musically oriented GEMA), and the "VG Bild-Kunst" [bildkunst.de] (Same thing for artists, filmmakers and photographers). A fee on scanners that surpass a certain speed in terms of pages per minute has been existent for quite a while already. At least the fees in Germany are significantly lower [heise.de] than those in France.

Since the views of the societies listed above and the hardware manufacturers are not exactly consensual, the case is expected to be taken to court.

1. goverments tend to do everything less efficiently than private organisations - I guess much of the money would be eaten by the goverment
2. I can not image a right way to divide the tax between all the artist
(I'm not to say that the current system is much better, though)

This is part of the Liberation news story, as translated by Babelfish:
Once, twice, three times. Pompière of service, decided to embed an opposition which improvises pyromaniac: " It is a tactic to shout with fire before there is fire ", reproached the Minister for the Culture the address of a line goguenarde. " It is good, the grass snakes? ", howl the RPR Patrick Devedjian.
Bad poetry, anyone?

"It works there - the BBC is renowned worldwide for its high quality programming and services. Why can't this model work for other mediums?"

Firstly, the BBC is a public broadcaster, and the license fee is the way that the organization gets all of its funding. You don't get any special rights over content, especially not that broadcast over the other commercial networks. Your analogy falls over there, I'm afraid.

Having said that, the idea you propose has some merit. The big question is: how should the loot from media sales be distributed amongst competing labels/artists. I mean, everybody could be listening to artist A, but what's to stop artist B (who's talentless and whom nobody listens to) from getting a cut?

The fish left me confused. Why would anyone set fire to a grass snake?

pyromaniac : "It is a tactic to shout with fire before there is fire " , reproached the Minister for the Culture the address of a line goguenarde. " It is good, the grass snakes ? " , howls the RPR Patrick Devedjian.

Although current proposals like this one are reiduclous and do nothing for anybody apart from record industry fatcats and pop music stars who already earn enough, it would have merit if taken to its ultimate extreme.

Imagine that in return for being taxed on recordable media, computers and hifi and video equipement you were then entitled to watch or listen to whatever you wanted for nothing - the cost would come from the taxes you have paid on the equipment. The RIAA/MPAA wouldn't need to worry about piracy because they'd already be getting the money at the source, and services like Napster would thrive as ways of promoting and distributing music.

This may seem odd, but think about Britain, where they already pay for most of their television content through a license fee (basically a tax really), although I'm invisioning a one-off fee instead at the time of purchase in order to cut down on red tape. It works there - the BBC is renowned worldwide for its high quality programming and services. Why can't this model work for other mediums?

But I've often wondered about this: if we have super-cool super-hero Captain America, does Lithuania have Captain Lithuania? And more importantly, does France have Captain France? Would Captain France wear some black & white striped shirt & an aerodynamic beret? Would his main weapon be a day old baguette?

There's a comic book for you. There's danger afoot, Captain France flies in to save the day by staging a preemptive surrender- waving the flag of France (except the red and blue stripes have been changed to white).

distributed amongst competing labels/artists. I mean, everybody could be listening to artist A, but what's to stop artist B
(who's talentless and whom nobody listens to) from getting a cut?

I think that I can help with that. It will be my job to define talent and to whom the money should go. Of course, any "artists" who fall outside of my definition of talent are screwed, but then, that's part of the fun.

As per policy, taxes are good for the people and we would all welcome it but for the fact that we feel the taxes collected are not being put to good use. Either we are right or the govts. have just not taken the effort to show and explain to us why they are right.

OK, contrary to everyone who flamed me last year on this subject, the EU has imposed a VAT on sales by non-EU Web corporations to EU citizens. They have, for now, backed down from the blank media CD/RW tax, which is good, but you still face Net taxes there.

The good news is non-EU Web corps may get to choose which EU country they "belong" to, and thus have a lower VAT tax on sales.

Expect the CD/RW blank media tax to come up again - major proponents for this are all those people who hate MP3...

Not in a modern society. That money will go to some government bureaucracy to perform an ongoing study of whether the artists are really being deprived of money by computers circa 1995. If they ever come to a conclusion (and usually they don't) then the artists may eventually get some money not used by that bureaucracy circa 2001. So sometime in the year 2040 some artist in some part of France might get 3 or 4 Francs for some work he did 39 years previous.

It's not "openssf", it's just "ssf"!
It's a legally-use-it-in-france hack of ssh1 that can not exceed 128 bits encryption and that you need to be registered to use... and in a french company, this is the only flavor of ssh you legally have the right to use.
I really hope this will change soon since it has numerous known security flaws, but the governement doesn't really seem to care.

yeah, right.
but for now better than nothing. not that a long time ago (about a bit more than one year), encryption was limited to 40 bits....
other thing I dislike is the idea you have to register to download and use SSF at in2p3 (which is the offical distro).
but i also think ssh1 is enough in many cases, no ?

I think that the music corporations know EXACTLY what they are doing. Their goal is to get money...every business' goal is, even if some take immoral measures to achieve that goal. Record companies didn't get to the top by being as ignorant as many of us tech monkeys believe they are. I'm sure they are just tickled pink with Napster, mp3's, and such. They KNOW that technology like Napster is actually increasing their business by both making people aware of new music, as well as making them more appreciative of music in general. Like myself, many people before mp3's wouldn't have even tried to listen to some types of music, since the only way to preview it is to buy the CD...which kinda defeats the purpose of previewing. People who are aware of what they like musically, using a program that makes it easier to take musical risks (i.e. music that is different than what they are used to), AND who are more appreciative of music in general are the ones that will then go out and buy the CD's.

However, record companies have done a good job of getting it into our heads that the opposite is really the case. We all think that they are losing money on CD's/DVD's, which perpetuates the record companies playing themselves off as the victim in this heinous crime.

So what does that have to do with France and CD-R taxes and the like? Well...my theory is that the record companies are just floating the idea of a tax in order to see what MORE they can get out of this sweet deal they have going on. They continue to put on a huge charade, and we haven't called them on it yet. We've been so emotional over the idea that we might lose our precious gigs of mp3's that that we haven't seen through the mirage in front of our very eyes. Shame on us.

Yes, because the money could have been used for some software that enough people wanted. Forcibly extracting money from people to pay for something that they won't voluntarily pay for also stops them from voluntarily paying for something they want *more*.

"We don't intend to tax computers" were the 'firehose' words with which Catherine Tasca(PS) doused the hemicycle (the House) during the question period -- thrice. As a fireman, intent on drowning the Opposition turned pyromaniacs: "It's a tactic to shout fire without a blaze!" said the Minister to the smart-alecky right-wingers. "Eating your own words, EH!!! shouted Patrick Devedjian (RPR)...
According to the Socialistes, Mrs Tasca should've kept he mouth shut rather than publically consider a tax on computer and other device susceptible of copying Intellectual Property....
Jean-Marc Ayrault but mostly François Hollande shouted their disagreement, underligning the incoherence of promoting tax cuts while announcing a new one even if not being of a fiscal nature......
The computer tax died in order to save government consistency.---

Don't tell anybody, but I had the "presence d'esprit" to mirror the Guest Book before it went down (When I saw the first javascript windows, I knew it was a matter of hours before the put it offline. I mirrored it at Tue, 16 Jan 2001 15:02:17 +0100, so, if they put it back on-line, I could see what comment have been removed. If they remove comments, I will write a script to re-submit them back:-) )

Anyway here are the 'javascript' url that visitors of this higly cultural site had popping over their screen. Napster, warez, sex. Usual cultural stuff.

('*******' mark a name I removed. I didn't included non javascript entries. I put all the entries, so it isn't really readable) I don't know if I should put the mirror somewhere, as it may easily be misused (there are the IPs of the posters) and I don't feel the right to edit it. Mmm.

This is an ominous sign. Of course they didn't expect it to be accepted, the first time. What this does, however, is build the expectation and acceptance of increasing taxation and enlargement of the list of things the government can meddle in. They're not taxing, which is good, but people have accepted the premise that they could, if they wanted to.

&gt But I've often wondered about this: if we have super-cool super-hero Captain America, does Lithuania have Captain Lithuania? And more importantly, does France have Captain France? Would Captain France wear some black & white striped shirt & an aerodynamic beret? Would his main weapon be a day old baguette?
Yes, we have SuperDupont. I don't know exactly who is Captain America, and what is the mood of his adventure, but SuperDupont is (was, it's now old) a funny read. Ironic, caricatural and wholly stupid.

They may be considered "worse", but the point was about efficiency, and I made it clear in my post I was talking about efficiency.

The US health care system spends twice as much as the Canadian system per-capita. You'd expect it to be more capable, especially as a substantial proportion of US citizens aren't covered at all. However, for the most part, both systems cover the vast majority of their citizens needs. It would not be accurate to say that the US system treats twice as many patients per dollar, or twice as many ailments.--

If the numbers of Canadians seeking medical treatment in the US was in the millions, with the border stations overwhelmed by canuks escaping the tyranny of a socialist healthcare system, then your calculations might be valid. It isn't, of course. The Canadian healthcare system is fine. It's not perfect, but it's hardly the crumbling disaster many American private-health advocates pretend it is. Sally Struthers is not pleading for funds from a Toronto emergency ward quite yet.

Is the extra expense worth spending? Probably. The day may yet come that someone can put a figure on how much a fully comprehensive healthcare system would require to fund, but that day has not come yet.

Nonetheless, I'm going back to my original point. If you measure a healthcare system by its efficiency, the Canadians unarguably have a more efficient healthcare system than those south of the border. Dollar-for-dollar, it treats more patients.

It's like arguing that a Pentium 450 is better than a Pentium 400. It may well be, but if the Pentium 450 based computer costs twice as much as the 400 based machine, clearly the 400 is more cost effective. (And, to continue the analogy, many would argue that the 450 may run several apps than the 400, and so should be bought anyway. I wouldn't argue. But in terms of cost effectiveness, or cost efficiency, the 400 is clearly the bargain)--

The Guest Book of the 'Ministere de la Culture' (www.culture.fr) have been spammed a lot yesterday. People discovered that HTML tags were not parsed from the names, and started putting javascript in their names that opened various browser window to anti-tax sites. Was pretty funny while it lasted. Then someone made a syntax error in its name and the page stopped loading.
So the webmaster decided to put it offline (or, more likely, was just waiting for something like that so they could put it offline).

The Guest Book of the 'Ministere de la Culture' (www.culture.fr) have been spammed a lot yesterday. People discovered that HTML tags were not parsed from the names, and started putting javascript in their names that opened various browser window to anti-tax sites. Was pretty funny while it lasted. Then someone made a syntax error in its name and the page stopped loading.

So the webmaster decided to put it offline (or, more likely, was just waiting for something like that so they could put it offline).

1. goverments tend to do everything less efficiently than private organisations - I guess much of the money would be eaten by
the goverment

This is often true but not always. Assuming you're defining government as any taxation funded system, and therefore would include the BBC as part of it, this issue came up during the 1990 ITV franchising round.

From what I recall, one of the arguments used to justify the auction system that was used was that the BBC, in total, earned about 50% more in revenues (from the licence fee and from overseas sales) than the ITV network. However, the ITV network put on one TV station (per locality.) By contrast, the BBC put on two TV stations, one of which contained a significant amount of regional content (at least as much as ITV.) It also funded 4 national radio stations, and a network of local radio stations. And a world reknowned symphony orchestra to boot.

It doesn't always work that way of course, but it certainly is possible for an institution answerable to government and funded by a government scheme to be more efficient than equivalent private enterprises.

Health services tend to be another example, though it's often difficult to tell whether private systems tend to spend more and get less in return because overall they have more funding and so a willingless to spend money on vanity schemes. The US spends twice as much as Canada per capita, but the health system in Canada is generally regarded as as adequate as the US except in a relatively small number of areas.

2. I can not image a right way to divide the tax between all the artist

Well, this not happening is a *really* good thing.
But since last week, we (french) already have something like 3FF (about 50 cents) tax per blank CD... for me who only burns Linux & BSD distros, this almost doubles the price of my CDs:-( and all that extra money goes mainly to music companies and producers...

Aaaahhh french laws... did I mention we're still not supposed to even *use* openssh?